7/29/06

CLAWS- The Movie

Tri-O's
oddities, observations, and opinions

by Herb Kandel



These past two weeks have given us a lot of heavy news……. war in Israel and Lebanon, continued death tolls in Iraq, tsunami in Indonesia, floods up north, wildfires in the west, record breaking heat in the continental U.S.. For a few moments let’s consider a lighter aspect of what is going on around here. Let’s go to a movie.

If you listen carefully at first you can almost detect the faint thumping bass. Yes, the sounds are getting more distinct as the bikini clad silhouette comes into focus. Soon their throbbing rhythm becomes ominous as the greenish brown object gradually fills the screen and the bikini babe begins to look like bait as she is viewed between the big open claw of the giant lobster. Fade screen to black and then red. We’re watching the next summer big hit, “CLAWS“. Maybe even directed by Steven Spielberg. But wait…..it may not be a movie based on fiction but a documentary based on fact (albeit science-fiction at this point) if the Lobster Liberation Front (LLF) has its way.

They claim when you put the live lobsters into a pot of boiling water they (the lobsters) feel pain and therefore it is inhumane. The LLF may want a law such as in Reggio, Italy where boiling lobsters alive is illegal and offenders can be fined up to $600. Some chefs here do dispatch the creatures to the great seaweed in the sky prior to dunking them in the boiling brine.


The LLF wants to return all the captured lobsters now residing in all those tanks in restaurants and supermarkets back to the ocean (sans rubber bands binding their claws) and then leave them alone.

Carrying forward Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest and natural selection over many lobster generations, and perhaps a mutation or two, our denizen of the deep might then indeed have evolved into this killer crustacean we may see on the screen. Ouch!

Let’s go back to the pain factor: in Norway scientists investigated pain, discomfort and stress in invertebrates (including crabs and live worms on a fish hook) and state that the answer is NO (let’s hope this is not like the “painless dentist” joke). None of these creatures feel a thing, they say. Which is good news for Norwegian fishermen because Norway's fishing industry is large and, needless to say, influential. The small Norwegian lobster is the third most valuable commercial species in the North Sea. One wonders if there could have been a hint of bias, but we will never know.

They go on to state “crabs and lobsters have only about 100,000 neurons, compared with 100 billion in people and other vertebrates (ever wonder who counted them?-italics, mine). While this allows them to react to threatening stimuli, there is no evidence they feel pain.”

Another study at the University of Wyoming, conducted on questions of neurology for almost 30 years, concluded “that awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral which fish do not possess.” In other words their brains are not developed enough to allow them to feel pain or sense fear. But if you were Shirley MacLaine and believed you were to be re-incarnated I’ll bet your choice would not be to come back as a lobster or a trout.

What’s a former lover of lobster, who is now a member of the LLF to do? How about mock lobster? Its main ingredients are potatoes, corn, green peas, and flour.

I don’t know but it all sounds fishy to me and I’d still rather the real thing as I say “Please pass the drawn butter.”



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UPDATE: From Tri-O’s 1/18/06 ““Riverwalk Orange Beach” should rethink its name. It’s acronym sounds suspect.”

Press Release 6/30/06- “Riverwalk in Orange Beach has been renamed Bama Bayou, developers of the project on the Intracoastal Waterway announced Thursday”